Yes to RSS!

October 22, 2008 | Written by

Do you use an RSS reader? No?

Fear not!

Last week, Left Brain explored what it takes for trends to go mainstream.

RSS is one of those trends.

For you new media novices, RSS is like a personalized, modern day magazine rack. A modern day paper boy. Here’s a great video that breaks it down very simply:

Facebookers will recognize RSS feeds as being similar to the News Feed feature on your homepage. It prevents you from having to visit every friend’s page every day in search of the latest gossip. In a similar way, RSS delivers all your news to one place, so you don’t have to go hunting all around for it.

A few years back, RSS was a mysterious technology, requiring special software and a knack for finding worthwhile subscriptions, most of which were very niche-focused. Now, the orange button is omnipresent online and makes simplified updates just a click away. According to recent Forrester reasearch on RSS, 11% of US adults online use RSS (and 12% don’t know if they do!). That means all you media addicts out there can stop visiting 100 websites every morning.

You don’t have to go to Gawker, Gawker will come to you.

Far and away the simplest RSS tool I’ve used is Google Reader. Its Outlook’y/Gmail’y feel is a safe harbor for many pros and novices alike. It allows you to share, save, and analyze your reading habits. It’ll even make recommendations of blogs you might find interesting based on your reading list.

Outlook also has a built in RSS reader, but I’ve found it cumbersome and slow.

Where does one find feeds? Almost anywhere. This blog has one listed to the right. Most news sites and blogs have them too:
- NYT
- WSJ
- FT
- Economist
- Gawker
- Mashable

For power users, you can go beyond the standard feeds, and set up personalized ones. Search Google News for your client, click on the RSS button, and have news piped straight to your reader live. Here’s one for Ruder Finn:

http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&tab=wn&ned=us&q=ruder+finn&ie=UTF-8&nolr=1&output=rss

Looking for a $10-50 million apartment in Gramercy? Search for it on Craigslist, click the RSS feed generated at the bottom of the page, and get live updates:
http://newyork.craigslist.org/search/rea/mnh?query=&minAsk=10000000&maxAsk=50000000&bedrooms=&neighborhood=132&format=rss

This use of RSS greatly simplifies tracking corporate reputation as well, and allows for the lightning-quick response mechanisms needed to take full advantage of the online conversation.

Not only is syndication an important technology for collecting information, but it’s just as important for sending information out. As more outlets come available for content consumption, companies will need look to look a broader distribution channels to ensure that they engage all their target audiences. RSS should be a no-brainer add to any corporate website that is even occasionally updated.

What’s in your RSS reader?

**UPDATE 1**
For BlackBerry addicts, I would strongly recommend checking out a terrific little program called Viigo: http://getviigo.com/beta. Not only is it a RSS reader for your BlackBerry, it can also sync with Google Reader and others to make sure you get all your news wherever you are (unless you’re on vacation, hopefully).

**UPDATE 2**
Is RSS just too much for you, you Average Joe Sixpack you? Lucky for you, there are sites out there that do all the legwork for you. They’re called aggregators, and they typically feature news from the top websites you would include in your RSS reader anyway. My favorites include:

• Alltop (top news sites summarized by category)
• Mahalo (human-powered search and live news update)
• Daily Beast (Tina Brown’s new daily news summary featuring original content and content from the likes of NYT and New Yorker)
• CEO Daily (all the top-tier CEO news and video you could want)

These aggregators also typically offer a daily email summary, to save you a trip to the page.